Pic. Credit by Engin Akyurt via Unsplash
OKRs have become quite popular in the last few years, making a successful journey from management coaching sessions to people across the organization. But every so often, one tends to hear that OKRs are "not delivering the goods". As the buzz around OKRs is increasing, so is the disillusionment among the rank and file.
If you have been in the industry long enough, you will find this sort of buzz-disillusionment phenomenon reminiscent of the "Agile movement" (Agile of the capital-A sort) some 10-15 years ago. Like the agile methodologies, the OKR framework was a rough codification of tried and tested techniques used in many organizations for years. Sadly, the growing popularity also gave rise to camps, cliques, and cults; each claiming theirs is the "one true version".
The goal of this post is not to discredit OKRs (or Agile, for that matter), but to acknowledge the common problems an organization has to face in the journey.
Is this OKR's Agile Moment?
There are quite a few similarities between OKRs and agile. Let's list out some:
Both take time, discipline, and practice to get right,
Both need to be adapted to the needs of the team/organization, not force fitted,
Both enable individual and team accountability,
Both rely on empowering individuals and teams,
Both encourage adapting to the change in the business climate,
Both can benefit with some expert coaching (at least initially),
Both work best if the whole organization is aligned; fractional implementations usually don't produce the best possible results (i.e., the problems and bottlenecks move elsewhere, but don't get eliminated),
Both need the organizational culture to change to be effective,
Both are simple to understand, but hard to effectively implement.
Regarding the last point, the simplicity of these concepts could be easily confused with a ready-to-use recipe - a silver bullet to address all the problems at once.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Just like with Agile, there is now a complete OKR ecosystem of tools, coaches, thought leaders, etc. And while this is a net good as it familiarizes more people and organizations with OKRs, one also needs to understand that adapting the concepts to the organization's needs is the hardest problem.
Let us walk through some common hurdles to cross in order to implement the OKR framework successfully...
Lack of support from Top Management
The success of agile practices in many organizations often came from bottom-up: individual teams experimenting with new practices and proving that they work. While this could also work for OKRs, the effectiveness is likely to be limited if just a part of an organization follows OKRs.
Let us consider that one function, say Marketing, decides to go ahead and implement OKRs. The important thing to note here is that no function/department works in a silo. So if OKRs of Marketing are not made known to the rest of the organization, it is not likely that the other functions are aligned to make them successful. Sure, the Marketing team by itself may benefit by having clear objectives and measurable key results but if they need help from Engineering or Product, they will have to navigate the inter-departmental conflicts like before.
To ensure that the everyone in the organization is rowing in the same direction, they have to be aligned with the organizational objectives. OKRs are probably the best framework for that but the top leadership needs to be at the helm. Unfortunately, quite too often, OKRs are rolled out selectively, with the leadership's minimal involvement. To be fair, such rollouts are not without their benefits: they introduce regular check-ins and prime the teams to the concept of OKRs.
However, without the strategic vision from the Top Management, the fractional OKR implementation may lack alignment with the rest of the organization. The teams may not get the ample time, budget, or other resources needed to achieve their objectives.
"Yikes! Another tool!"
If the Top Leadership sees the value of implementing OKRs across the organization, getting everyone onboard could take a lot of time and patience. There could be any number of problems while getting the teams and managers to adapt OKRs:
They could just use OKRs as a drop-in replacement for whatever they were using earlier (e.g., KRAs) without seeing OKRs as a transformational tool.
They may see this as a passing fad that someone in the top leadership is enamoured with - something that will die on its own in a few months.
They may see this as another tool for them to update, in addition to the bunch of tools they already update (more on this in the "Data" section below).
It is important for the OKR champions to understand the various objections (voiced or unvoiced) that the people across the organization may have. If these problems are not addressed, people may just pay lip service to the OKR rhetoric, derailing the OKR implementation. There will always be nay-sayers but if a majority of the critical managers and influencers in the organization are not on board with the OKR initiative, it is not likely to succeed.
Some of these objections may be addressed with proper guidance and training, but the top leadership should ensure that they provide this guidance and not just outsource it.
Long cycle times
Like in software, when it comes to OKRs, "perfect" should not be used as an adjective but as a verb. Organizations are dynamic, having rigid OKRs just do not fit the mould. It may take a long time for an organization to get to OKRs that really meets their needs - balancing strategic and aspirational goals. By the time organization gets to that point lots of quarters may have passed, objectives missed or badly defined, a lot of people may have become disillusioned.
While iterative improvement is the life-blood of any growing organization, the duration of the iteration matters. While adopting agile methodologies, say Scrum, a team may quickly settle down to a "performing"mode within 3-4 Sprints (3-8 weeks). However, OKRs typically have longer cycles - 1-3 months or even more. This speed of learning is obviously a lot slower and a regret of "did we choose the wrong tool/method?" starts building up.
A very likely reason for this is also because the "set-and-forget" mindset is quite common for goal setting in general. One thing people often forget is that OKRs are not set in stone. A quarter is a long time and the business priorities can change - OKRs should be updated based on the data received. For this to happen, regular follow-ups focused on the medium-term objectives are absolutely important. While the OKR tools may enable this through reminders and such, the discipline had to be built by the team - and that often is harder than it sounds.
Data flows are broken
It is quite redundant to call modern organizations "data-driven", because those that are not driven by data have been left far behind. Yet, most OKRs are still being measured manually. This not only makes it hard for anyone to see the OKR progress, it also burdens the teams with the unnecessary task for having to update the OKR tool manually. There would be very few people who are happy doing this sort of manual update.
For the last several years, the problem has moved from "We need data" to "We have too much data". A typical growing organization would use anywhere between 6-15 different tools for various functions like marketing, engineering, sales tracking, customer management, etc. - each of which is a potential data source for some quarterly objective. That's not even counting the spreadsheets that everyone ends up using for tracking metrics and trends! A standalone OKR tool is not much better than a bunch of notes scribbled on a whiteboard.
This is where we can help.
Our mission
(Yep, here comes the plug!)
At Praximax, our goal is to unlock data trapped in the siloes of various functions such as engineering, marketing, sales, HR, etc. We believe that in this day and age, data should flow between all functions to build a coherent whole; helping, not hindering, leaders to make quick decisions based on data.
Many organizations have dedicated roles or even entire teams for compiling the data from the various sources. Data that is already digital, albeit on different tools. Scraping all this data manually creates room for human error and is almost never current. Most importantly, it is a waste of human capital!
Unlocking the fluent flow of such data not only makes managing OKRs a breeze, but it also gives a holistic view of the organization. That's our mission - to Uncomplicate The Workplace - by making your data work for you.
If you are struggling with getting insights out of data (not just graphs and complicated tables), we would love to hear from you. Give us a shout and we can catch up for a short conversation. No slideshow, no pitches, no product demos, no nonsense. Just 30 productive minutes about what are the problems you want solved.